THE CRAZY: Senate hopeful limns litter boxes!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Plus, Motherless Child gone wild: According to more than a dozen experts, The Crazy has been a part of human life ever since our species came into existence.

At the present time, manifestations of The Crazy suffuse our nation's politics. As an example of what we mean, consider this exchange between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens in their newest Conversation at the New York Times:

Gail: In my rooting-for category, I’m going to bring up Senator Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire—just so I can mention her dreadful opponent, Don Bolduc. He’s long been known as an opponent of legal protections for transgender people. Last week, he claimed schools were giving out litter boxes to support kids who identify as cats. Which is, um … not true.

Who’s your most-to-be-avoided?

Bret: I’m with you on Hassan, a conscientious and bipartisan legislator. Who—I am amazed to say—might lose on Tuesday...

Is that even possible? Did Candidate Bolduc really advance the crackpot claim that schools have been "giving out litter boxes to support kids who identify as cats?"

Well yes, as a matter of fact, he did! Here's the Washington Times—not the Washington Post—reporting the crazy remarks:

HOWELL (11/2/22): Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc said he is “not backing down” from a claim that a New Hampshire school has litter boxes for kids who identify as cats.

Mr. Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general who is facing Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, said the burden of proof is on the school to prove it is untrue after a parent and a student talked to him about it at an event.

Audio posted by CNN depicted Mr. Bolduc telling a campaign audience there are people who identify as “furries and fuzzies” and act like cats in schools and they have litter boxes available to them.

Mr. Bolduc defended the comments when pressed on the source for his account.

More than a dozen experts shook their heads over Candidate Bolduc's remarks. But what Stephens said is also true. It's possible that Candidate Bolduc could win today's Granite State Senate election!

The capacity for crazy belief has been on wide display in our nation's politics over the past several decades. (In our view, certain types of crazy belief are widespread within our own blue tribe.)

That said, also this:

According to the American song book, "Motherless child sees a hard time when mother is gone." For fuller information on this phenomenon, you can just click here.

The Crazy is part of our natural history, but so are the difficulties sometimes faced by the motherless child. These phenomena joined forces last night on the Fox News Channel, as that station's official abandoned child continued to enact his ongoing psychodrama.

Tucker Carlson began his show with his standard sarcastic remarks—and with his trademark instant dissembling. Sarcastically, he said that there had been no problems with the conduct of the 2020 elections—absolutely no problems at all:

CARLSON (11/7/2022): Above all, in case you were wondering, voting machines around this country recorded the legitimate results [in 2020] with flawless precision. 

The machines counted each vote cast for each candidate and awarded those votes accordingly. Can you see the software that would prove that happened? Well, no, you can't. 

As with the bodycam footage from Nancy Pelosi's house, you don't have the necessary clearance to see it. But you can know that electronic voting machines are 100% safe and reliable and that's why government officials have told you again and again that the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history." 

Believe it! By the way, if you don't believe it, our advice is to shut the hell up unless you want to be sued into bankruptcy or have the FBI interrupt your breakfast. 

That, in summation, is the official media-approved view of our last election. It was perfect! Don't ask questions!

For transcript and tape, click here.

As you can see, Motherless Child feels badly beset when mother is gone! He can't (yet) see the bodycam footage from the violent attack on Paul Pelosi. Also, the FBI is very likely going to throw him in jail!

It was at this point that the abandoned child began to display his vaunted skills at selective quotation. Having sarcastically mocked the idea that the last election was free from fraud, he began to dissemble about a new report in Politico:

CARLSON (continuing directly): So given that, we were a little surprised when we pulled up Politico this morning. Politico is the publication that helps control the rest of the media on behalf of the Biden administration. We were surprised to discover that actually voting machines are not safe at all.

Electronic voting machines, Politico told us, are in fact easily hacked and manipulated, which is why real countries like France have banned them and use paper ballots instead. "There are real risks," Politico told us, "that hackers could tunnel into voting equipment and other election infrastructure to try to undermine Tuesday's vote." 

According to Politico, that's entirely possible because many states "use wireless modems to transmit unofficial election night results to their central offices. These modems use telecommunications networks that are vulnerable to hackers, and malicious actors could exploit them to tamper with unofficial vote data, corrupt voting machines or compromise the computers used to tally official results." 

Rigged voting machines? Fake vote totals? Underground tunnels to subvert modems? Isn't this the release the Kraken talk? Well, it is. and as of yesterday, it would have been regarded as insane, possibly criminal. It would have been an assault on our democracy. 

But things have changed. Twenty-four hours before Democrats are expected to lose in the midterm elections, Politico is letting you know that elections are fake and not just because of rigged electronics voting machines, by the way. There's an even bigger problem.  

From there, Motherless Child went on to offer a deeply stupid compilation of edited comments about misinformation, most of them perfectly sensible, from people on CNN. 

For today, we'll focus on the way the motherless child described that report from Politico. Also, we'll note the ridiculous way he explained Politico's alleged motives.

As we've shown you, Motherless Child told Fox viewers the following:

He told them that Politico had published a report suggesting that this week's elections will be badly compromised. He said Politico was reporting this because Politico knows that the Democrats are about to get wiped out in this week's elections.

According to Motherless Child, that's why Politico is spreading the word that this week's elections "are fake!" Rather typically, Motherless Child forgot to cite this opening passage from the Politico essay in question:

GELLER (11/7/22): The midterms face a bevy of digital threats, from stolen Twitter accounts to hacked election websites, that could spark chaos, confusion and unrest that last long after the polls close.

The 2020 presidential election was rife with allegations of voting machine hacks that were later debunked. Yet there are real risks that hackers could tunnel into voting equipment and other election infrastructure to try to undermine Tuesday’s vote.

The U.S. has many safeguards protecting voting equipment, so any actual hack would probably be localized, quickly detected and unlikely to affect final results. But as 2020 showed, even an attempt to change votes—or the mere allegation of tampering—could undermine faith in the outcome.

In fact, Politico was reporting that any attempt to hack voting equipment would likely be quickly detected—that outcomes wouldn't be affected at all. Motherless Child forgot to report this as he toyed with the people who watch him on Fox, as he does on a nightly basis.

From there, Motherless Child went on to offer a brain-damaged account of what has been said on CNN concerning mis- and disinformation. It's certainly true that CNN could do a better job with various topics, but no one turns our discourse into a clown show quite like the Motherless Child.

According to more than a dozen experts, Motherless Child seems to be involved in a lifelong psychodrama—a psychodrama not of his initial making. Experts say such people should be pitied, but not until they've been stopped from creating societal harm through their disordered behavior.  

By way of contrast, Candidate Bolduc is simply involved in The Crazy, these experts say. He's been giving voice to a crazy belief, but he may win all the same!

Given the way our species tends to regard itself, it's surprising to see that so many people can be susceptible to so many crazy beliefs. But The Crazy is all around us at present—and that returns us to the "documentary," and by extension the book, to which Kyrie Irving recently posted a link.

(For background, see yesterday's report.)

Man [sic] is the rational animal? Tomorrow, we'll turn to that recent report in RollingStone—the report which specifies which manifestations of The Crazy Irving was perhaps prepared to believe. These crazy beliefs have long bedeviled our struggling species, and they just won't go away.

When the New York Times reports this matter, it doesn't describe the crazy beliefs which are at issue here. We think RollingStone showed better judgment in explicitly describing the manifestations of The Crazy which have long dogged human life—in describing the crazy beliefs Irving seems unfazed by today.

Remember, it's all anthropology now! Our society is in a very bad state—and it's very hard to see an easy route of escape.

Tomorrow: RollingStone, willing to speak


76 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Interesting warning:

    “Even so, temporarily incorrect information could fuel doubts about results, especially if the hackers bragged about their accomplishments. And if subsequent audits that correct digital tampering dramatically change vote tallies, bad-faith actors might seize on those changes to falsely allege fraud.”

    Thanks, Politico. Who would have ever guessed?

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    1. In order to materially affect an election result, the hacking would have to be done on a massive scale. It may be easy to convince people there is a hacking problem, but actually changing an outcome means hacking many computers over a large geographic area all at the same time, because our voting and vote tallying is distributed, not centralized.

      If voters understood more about how voting actually occurs, it wouldn't be so easy to create the impression of fraud.

      What Cecelia describes here seems like a lot of unnecessary work. Voters don't care whether there is actual tampering of any kind -- they don't check to verify claims of fraud. They just accept them, so why would anyone need to actually do any changes anywhere -- it is enough to allege fraud and have the followers accept the accusation, which they will do without any evidence whatsoever. Right wingers have never needed proof of any of their conspiracy theories, whether about adrenochrome or sandy hook or Bill Gates and the implantation of chips via vaccine. So why would they need even the slightest actual tampering to arouse doubts? They wouldn't.

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    2. Anonymouse 10:53am, you didn’t read the piece, of course.

      Politico admitted that an allegation is all that’s needed.

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    3. Then why did you post the rest of this?

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    4. "The U.S. has many safeguards protecting voting equipment, so any actual hack would probably be localized, quickly detected and unlikely to affect final results. But as 2020 showed, even an attempt to change votes—or the mere allegation of tampering—could undermine faith in the outcome."

      This is from the part that Somerby quoted. So why did you post what you did? Are you trying to undermine faith in election results yourself, without any evidence that they are unreliable? That's what it sounds like to me.

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    5. Anonymouse11:27am, I didn’t post the rest of it, I posted some of it, because it’s a fascinating piece that tries to walk a line between saying things rarely go wrong, but here’s how you can claim they went wrong.

      I posted a link to this yesterday from Politico’s Twitter timeline before Tucker’s show.

      Great minds, and motherless kids, think alike.

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    6. Anonymouse 11:34am, no, I linked it yesterday and quoted from it today.

      In the same spirit as Tucker did.

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    7. It doesn't take a genius to make an unsubstantiated claim. It takes a certain kind of moron with a morally lax attitude about life. And someone lacking in empathy. Is that really you?

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    8. That’s no way to talk about Politico.

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    9. That's exactly the way to talk about Politico.
      Do you think they refuse to discuss how political choices affect the citizens by accident?

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    10. They do discuss the effects of political choices. Often hyperbolically.

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    11. Hyperbolical definition: "(of language) exaggerated"

      I doubt this is what you meant, since it makes no sense in the context of what you said.

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  3. Type that query into Google and find out.

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  4. https://www.google.com/search?q=where+do+you+go+to+vote&rlz=1C1VDKB_enUS951US951&oq=where+do+you+go+to+vote&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512l4j0i390.3271j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

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  5. Bob deserves the Medal of Freedom just for enduring more than five seconds of Carlson's garbage. I've tried watching it and wanted to vomit immediately. The phony, exaggerated, and overly-relied-on facial expressions to convince the rubes he's acting in the best spirit of good faith and intellectual honesty -- this alone is enough to induce nausea.

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    1. Somerby illustrates the danger of watching Fox. He began by trying to understand the other side, but now he preaches right wing disinformation here by telling us that Carlson often makes sense and that he has better facts than on MSNBC. Somerby deserves no medals for drinking the Kool Aid and becoming a right wing shill.

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    2. Oh yeah Mike. Wouldn’t it be awful if Bob made a habit of keeping up with the most watched shows?

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    3. What is the point of watching a show if you don't know which are the funny parts?

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  6. I need to vote now.

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  7. tl;dr

    "More than a dozen experts shook their heads over Candidate Bolduc's remarks."

    Just a dozen, eh? No letter signed by 51 former 'intelligence' officials this time?

    Tsk. As you, dear Bob, know quite well yourself, when your dembot experts deny something, that's a sure sign it's true; without a doubt.

    "As you can see, Motherless Child feels badly beset when mother is gone!"

    Sadly, you, dear Bob, sound like a typical 100% liberal cult asshole here. Would you stop, please?

    ...besides, there's absolutely nothing objectionable in Mr. Carlson's quote you provided. Sarcasm, yes. But if you find sarcasm objectionable, then you probably should stop your blogging immediately: it's full of it.

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    1. I'm not much for Tucker Carlson, ever since he jumped the line to get a COVID vaccine before older, and more vulnerable Americans could get there's.

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    2. Oh noes! Did Bob go after your hero, dear Snowflake? Tsk. Oh well.

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    3. Mao didn't read Somerby's essay today (tl;dr). Don't respond to him.

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    4. I don't watch his show. Did Tucker ever explain why he felt he needed to get the COVID vaccine before those with co-morbidities?

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    5. If Tucker were on the Titanic, he'd have pushed dozens of women and children (and let's not kid ourselves, men too) to get in the first lifeboat.

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    6. 11:30,
      Tucker would only push the men, if they were a lot smaller than him. Modern Conservatives are nothing, if not cowards.

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    7. 11:33,
      Tucker would only push the women if they were a lot smaller than him.

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    8. No, the big men are busy dressing up as Molly Brown.

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    9. Looks like Mao may have to tell Daddy Bob is being a very bad boy! Hilarious.

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    10. Actually, a lot of men died, including famous men.

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    11. Even famous men are mortal, but those who push women and children out of the way during disasters live longer (see the Donner Party). Tucker pushed people with comorbidities that made them at higher risk out of the way so that he could get his covid shot first. Who had to die so that Tucker could live?

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    12. “Tucker pushed people with comorbidities that made them at higher risk out of the way so that he could get his covid shot first. Who had to die so that Tucker could live?”

      Bill O’Reilly.

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    13. J Bruce Ismay survived the Titanic disaster — dishonorably.

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  8. "It's possible that Candidate Bolduc could win today's Granite State Senate election!"

    Somerby can say this, or anything else about the election, because, as he has said many times before, anything is possible. It is also possible that Hassan will win. That is within the scope of "anything".

    If I lived in the Granite State myself, I could do something to affect the outcome, such as vote for Hassan, but most of us do not live in the tiny state of New Hampshire. So what is the point of Somerby predicting that Bolduc could win? Why not predict that Hassan will win? That is more likely, but Somerby doesn't do probabilities (math is hard).

    Somerby says: " (In our view, certain types of crazy belief are widespread within our own blue tribe.)"

    Does Somerby mean to imply that any Democrats are going to vote for Bolduc because of furry litter boxes? What evidence does Somerby have that this is true?

    New Hampshire has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in 7 of the last 8 elections, only voting for G.W. Bush against Al Gore in 2000. Why would New Hampshire vote for a Trump wannabee like Bolduc in this year's senatorial race? The latest polls still show Hassan ahead, as she has been since last April (see 538 blog).

    What is the basis for making a prediction that is entirely unsupported by any evidence whatsoever? Somerby needs more than just "anything is possible" if he is going to yank Democrats' chain like this. Given the levels of anxiety about this election, it is unkind of Somerby to make these sorts of statements, and even worse to suggest that things are so crazy that Democratic frontrunners throughout this election can have the football snatched away at the last minute. What good does Somerby do with his doom and gloom? He gives comfort to Republicans while working against Democratic best interests, which today include getting out as many voters as possible. Discouraging people, as Somerby seems determined to do, lets them sit home when they should be going to the polls.

    Anything is not possible. It is not possible that Democratic voters will believe there are furry litter boxes in schools. It is not possible Democrats will support Bolduc. There may be independents who will, but that is why we need to get every Democrat to the polls today. Trying to convince Independents about the absence of furries in schools, when they don't know enough to pick a political party much less a candidate, is a waste of time. Just as Somerby today is wasting our time.

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    1. Anonymouse 11:22am, Real Clear Politics has Hassan up by only 0.3.

      They’ve got the race in the toss-up column, with a “probable Dem hold”.

      In light of all you’ve said about the overwhelming probability of this seat staying Dem. Considering your prolix protestations of Somerby’s poor logical and bad motives. Remembering that it’s the cat-box candidate who!s the competition. Don’t you think you look like a long- winded troll turning justified angst about the race and “the crazy” into something heinous?

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    2. The cat litter box talk is virtue-signaling. Bolduc's punching down on trans kids, which is one of the two things Republican voters care about.

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    3. I think he’s playing on the over- credulousness that wokeness has worked so hard to inspire.

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    4. Huh? That makes no sense Cecelia. Wokeness has nothing to do with litter boxes or credulousness. It refers to black people who know their own history, including the parts about slavery and Jim Crow and the lingering institutional racism. You might know that if you were more woke yourself, but you are too busy credulously imbibing what Politico is selling.

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    5. Anonymouse4:52pm, when you try to mainstream asininity as hard as you folks do, don’t be surprised if people believe you’re capable of any stupidity.

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    6. Here is an example of the kind of evasive remark Cecelia makes when she really has no response.

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  9. No one is stopping you.

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  10. "According to the American song book, "Motherless child sees a hard time when mother is gone."

    Tucker Carlson was not motherless for long. His father remarried.

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    1. That doesn't mean Tucker isn't one fu*^%ed-up mess. Just listen to him.

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    2. It means it wasn't his mother that fucked him up.

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  11. If Bob is going to start covering both
    sides he has a lot of catching up to
    do. Why doesn’t Tuck get to use
    Trump’s insanity defense?

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  12. Do you want to go vote together?

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  13. "Experts say such people [motherless children] should be pitied, but not until they've been stopped from creating societal harm through their disordered behavior."

    Experts do not say this. There are no experts attributing Tucker Carlson's behavior to divorce or to being left with a father as a single parent (briefly). Divorce does not cause mental illness in children, nor do experts say that those with problems should be "pitied." They suggest treatment.

    This is Somerby's equivalent of a twinkie defense of someone whose bad behavior has other sources. Most children of divorce do not grow up to be Tucker Carlson's. And notice that Trump had two parents. His mother is rarely mentioned, but Trump was not a child of divorce. Later, he had 4 wives, most of whom he cheated on, one who claims he physically abused her. Trump's daughter Tiffany, who lived with her mother after the divorce, has not become anything like Trump's other children.

    Somerby's assertions are almost never accompanied by any form of evidence as support. Today he makes up nameless "experts" to lend credibility to an idea he has just pulled from his ass. There is some superficial "common sense" validity to the idea that a divorce is disruptive to children, but evidence shows that divorce doesn't create personality disorders -- it creates temporary adjustment problems accompanied by sadness (at age 8) instead of anger, and it does not make sociopaths out of children. Some do better after a divorce because the marriage was more dysfunctional than coping in a single-parent household. But what does Somerby care about facts? Apparently nothing.

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    1. Anonymouse 11:43am, now we’ve all heard from excellent authority, that early childhood trauma makes you more likely to be an authoritarian conservative because it enlarges your amygdala.

      I think anonymices need to get your references-to-authority aligned.

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    2. Divorces are not necessarily traumatic for children. It is someone else who keeps talking about the amygdala studies, not me. But if someone were traumatized as a child, it would tend to enlarge the amygdala and lead to greater affinity for Republican politics. However, what causes sufficient trauma to do that and at what age? It isn't divorce. It is more likely something in the first year of life and threatening to survival, not something social after the brain has become wired and after the huge growth in knowledge of the toddler years, after attachment patterns are already established. Look up brain plasticity in the first year of life to see how trauma affects the amygdala. While you're at it, look up how hormones in utero and shortly after birth affect gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual development (which fetuses become boys and which girls). Warning: there is science involved.

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    3. Anonymouse4:59pm, I knew you’d get the “science” worked out after you finally gleaned some of the dynamics in this thread.

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    4. I really don't understand why conservatives envy people with education, when anyone can go to college if they want. There is a community college system that is open entry, so even Cecelia can attend. And then she would be able to follow what those with a few credits can grasp easily.

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  14. I voted a long time ago, when early voting first started in my state. Don't leave this to the last minute (as conservatives have been pushing their voters to do). The lines will be longer, the later in the day you go vote.

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  15. Who did you vote for?

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  16. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/04/26/10-political-engagement-knowledge-and-the-midterms/

    According to Pew, about 30% of people are politically active in the sense of doing something active to support a candidate. That leaves 70% of the nation relatively disengaged during an election. That leaves a lot of room for The Crazy, as Somerby puts it.

    How surprising is it that people who are undereducated will believe untrue things about any subject, out of ignorance if nothing else? Does that necessarily make anyone "crazy"?

    Most adults have not been in a classroom in a long long time. They may have no idea whether teachers are letting kids dress up as cats, when they do include dress up as firemen and other role models in kindergarten and preschool. Why not cats or tigers or other animals as costumes for fantasy play? If preschools provide plastic foods for play kitchens, why not play litter boxes? Is that really so crazy?

    Somerby soft pedals the rest of Bolduc's theorizing, that teachers are providing litter boxes to groom children into adopting trans gender identities. This isn't about cat role playing but about stoking adult fears that their children are being taught to be abnormal by strangers in the schools. Is that crazy? Yes, and also untrue, but who cares about truth at this blog? Not Somerby. His idea that Tucker was made into a sociopath because his father got divorced and Tucker stayed with his dad, is just as crazy as Bolduc's idea about furry litter boxes and forcing gender transitions on unwary children. People who are ignorant do not need much convincing that fanciful ideas might be true, if they are consistent with some common sense notion, in the absence of facts or knowledge. And that is where the problem is -- voter education may be how we innoculate people against the crazy.

    Somerby never took a psychology course at Harvard and now he believes a lot of crazy stuff about how people think. But how do you grab an adult and make him learn something new? That is the hard part. That's why education level correlates with political affiliation and the ones with more education tend to be Democrats -- because education helps people avoid the crazy stuff floating around in all corners of our society, not just politics.

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    Replies
    1. Should we tell Anonymouse 12:03pm?

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    2. He can read my comments for himself (or herself).

      Please stop pretending that everyone here who posts as anonymous is the same person.

      Delete
  17. Anonymouse12:01pm, she wrote in Digby’s name.

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  18. Bob writing about Fox today has really shaken up poor dim Cecelia.

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    Replies
    1. All his stuff does. Well written and thought provoking.

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    2. Well written? No.

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    3. Thought provoking? No.
      Annoying? Yes, definitely.

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  19. Although Homo sapiens is the only human species living today, long ago there were many human species. Maybe they were crazy, too.

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  20. I tried to write in Cecelia, but the software changed it to Cecilia.

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  21. Digby is too Teutonic for my tastes.

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  22. Anonymouse 12:36pm, software sabotage was on Politico’s list.

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  23. Lawyers Guns and Money has good post up about Jordan Peterson and his 12 Rules of Living and how liberals can benefit from them. Starting with the make your bed rule and tips for avoiding mucus stains and eating lamb tendons etc

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    Replies
    1. Jordan Peterson is a huge asshole who is a God to incels because he blames women for disliking unlikeable men.

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    2. 5:04. I think you need to reevaluate your position. He has a lot of salient advice to help Democrats.

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  24. In order for Somerby's theory to be true, they had to be crazier than us, unless craziness is a survival trait and not a liability.

    I think the kinds of things that Somerby is calling crazy have generally had little impact on survival, except in rare instances such as covid denial, insurrections, and negligent use of firearms. The rest of the time craziness is merely annoying to the people around you.

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  25. Now some poor sap will think there was actually fraud when this is merely troll mumblings.

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  26. Politico didn't post this crap here. You and Somerby did that.

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